Welcome to the LPV forum!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the LPV forum! We established this forum after a strategy meeting at AAVSO HQ between Arne Henden, Mike Simonsen, Elizabeth Waagen, and myself. It is intended to be a venue for discussion of all things related to LPV stars, both LPV observing and LPV research of interest to the AAVSO community. We want this forum to be a place where people can ask questions about LPV stars, discuss strategies for observing them, and share ideas on how the AAVSO and its observer community can contribute to the wider community of LPV researchers.

Here we define LPVs broadly to include stars of the Mira ("M"), semiregular ("SR"), and long-period ("L") classes. In general, we're interested in giant stars -- either asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars or supergiants -- that pulsate with periods of hundreds of days. Any questions related to LPVs are fair game; we hope that all observers -- visual and instrumental -- will participate in the discussion. Both observer communities have a lot to contribute to LPV research, and there's a lot of observational and theoretical work left to do on these stars.

The AAVSO has made enormous contributions to the observational study of LPVs over the past century, and we hope this continues! Please join us in studying the LPVs, and share your ideas, interests, and questions with the community. We hope you contribute your observations as well!